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Shades Fine-Tunes Your Mac's Screen Brightness
Posted by Lifehacker US Edition at 12:30 AM on June 4, 2008
Mac only: Free utility Shades adds finer screen brightness controls to your Mac than the defaults. Once you install the Shades Preference pane and turn it on, you can brighten or darken your screen across a much wider range than the Mac's built-in controls, and make your laptop in bed much more bearable to your sleepy significant other or the guy on the red-eye flight in the next seat. Shades doesn't affect OS X's default controls and colour profiles. If you get carried away by the range Shades provides and dim your screen too dark, Alt+Esc will set it back to the default brightness. Thanks eyeRmonkey!
Tags: brightness | downloads | fix | mac os x | screen | tweaks
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
gorilly
Posted 1:13 AM 4/6/08
i installed it on my macbook pro... cant see the point of it... just does the same as f2/f1
gorilly
dorylomorphs
Posted 12:49 AM 4/6/08
This will make the mornings a whole lot better.
dorylomorphs
nevin
Posted 1:32 AM 4/6/08
@gorilly: It gives you a much finer level of control than the standard buttons. Esp. the last block that goes from visible to blank in one jump.
nevin
geohunt.ca
Posted 1:58 AM 4/6/08
I've been using this thing for a few months now and quite like it. Sometimes its a little slow to respond to a click, but its still an awesome little tool.
geohunt.ca
phoomp
Posted 1:42 AM 4/6/08
Thanks. It's always annoyed me how little control the MacOS offers for configuring a screen.
phoomp
auzigog
Posted 2:21 AM 4/6/08
It's particularly useful for people who have a Hackintosh. That should be added to the tags for this post.
auzigog
azpat
Posted 4:03 AM 4/6/08
You know in Windows (I know it's a mac post, but try to be open minded) when you logoff, everything slowly turns to black and white (or maybe it's more of a sepia)? That's what I was hoping for when I saw the title of this app. I'm apparently not the only one who wants to go retro sometimes: [www.neowin.net]
azpat
Josh*
Posted 4:56 AM 4/6/08
I've been using this for ages, it's great to have a slider in the menu bar for adjusting external displays instead of fiddling with their on-board menus.
Never found a need to use it with my MacBook pro
Josh*
Johnay
Posted 5:24 AM 4/6/08
Whatever happened to mechanical knobs & sliders? Appropriate technology, anyone?
Johnay
Josh*
Posted 7:21 AM 4/6/08
@Johnay: OSDs are where it's at, dude.
Josh*
sam1am
Posted 7:17 AM 4/6/08
I would also recommend screenshade. It runs like an app, sits in your menubar, and does the job complete with hotkeys. Overall I like it better. I don't want to go into the prefs pane to turn on and off shades. Oh, and it's free.
[www.macupdate.com]
sam1am
johcagaorl
Posted 9:19 AM 4/6/08
I love this application, it is wonderful. I use it when I want to use the computer while I have the projector on (same room) and my iMac no longer blinds everyone.
johcagaorl
Jeff Axelrod
Posted 2:09 PM 4/6/08
Does anyone know of a similar app for the PC? I have the bright-laptop-in-bed problem, and even if I dim to the minimum setting, the display is still quite bright in the dark for my wife (and my eyes.)
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Check out my blog, [www.tipninja.com] , where I share tips from optimizing your PC use, to cooking and food storage and household organization to personal happiness.
Jeff Axelrod
Silver_Back
Posted 5:46 PM 4/6/08
I use Nocturne [docs.blacktree.com] which was created by the same guy who made Quicksilver for the Mac. It's an easy to use program which has a night mode to save on energy and eye sight. I tuned it so that it would be red on black which is a life saver since this is a natural way to save night vision and glare on the eyes.
Silver_Back
Mikael
Posted 2:44 AM 6/6/08
I don't get it? All it does is to add a dark overlay on my MacBook, it doesnt actually change the backlight brightness. What's the point in that?
Mikael